Loving another as I love myself implies that I become imbued with the desires of another as my own and even more as with my own. Like Bina, I “absorb” his desires with my AHP (Awzen, Hotem, Peh) in order to provide him with everything he desires.

This is what love is. This is how a mother loves her child. To love like that, I need to reach the spiritual degree of Bina, having undergone the degree of Hafetz Hesed (exiting, rising above my desires). In the beginning, when a point in the heart awakens in me, I acquire free will, enter the group, and study while remaining in the egoistic intention, Lo Lishma (not for Her Name).

Then, I ascend to the first level of altruistic intention, Lishma (for Her Name), which is regarded as Hafetz Hesed. At this degree of Bina, I first obtain the desire to bestow, GE (Galgalta ve Eynaim), followed by the desire to receive in order to bestow, AHP. I rise above the mountain of egoism of the zero, first, and second degrees (GE) and afterwards, over the mountain of egoism of the third and fourth degrees (AHP).

Finally, I engage my AHP in order to relate to others as Bina relates to Malchut. At this point, it is a complete intention of Lishma, the spiritual degree of love. Why love? It is love because I am mutually included in the others, absorb their desires, and fulfill them.

This is how we start loving others. In this love, we find love for the Creator which signifies the end of correction (Gmar Tikkun).
[25411]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/31/10, "The Need for Love of Friends"

Related Material:
Difficult Work Based On A Simple Principle
Concessions Bring Peace In The World And Family
The Rescue Mission

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work - No Comments →

Every person wants to live in a world built on love, yet no one believes this is possible. Love exists only in children’s fairytales because every person understands that this is good for a child, that it makes life safer than animosity.

But what if it were possible to make the world like that? We live in a world that’s hostile to us, where everyone is fighting and competing with one another, and where life is becoming worse and worse.

“A person is a small world”; man’s anger and cruelty toward the world are starting to turn against him when he actualizes his egoistic desires and hates himself! This split personality is becoming more and more prominent.

Now imagine that you could shift your view and all your relationships to the path of care and love. What if we could suddenly raise and correct the whole world so no one would steal, no one would harm another person, and no one would use others to their detriment? We would see a reverse world and no one would be afraid that tomorrow their life would be destroyed. People wouldn’t be afraid that tomorrow we will destroy the earth and bury ourselves under the waste from our own production.

Love would oblige us to act in the best and most correct way. We wouldn’t have to search for billions of occupations just to keep the population busy, producing things no one needs. Even if they wouldn’t work, every person would receive what he needs because then people also wouldn’t need any excesses since they would live in a kind, amiable world.

Then we wouldn’t pollute the earth with unnecessary products, which is 90% of all the things being produced. If we look at nature, there is nothing wasted. Look at how life is organized in the animal kingdom, from the beginning of creation to its end, in all the forms that are included in nature’s cycle where everything is repeatedly used to 100% capacity.

All the cycles are absolutely closed, with the exception of the things man does. When man produces anything, he does not return it to nature in the natural form, but only in the form of toxins which poison nature.

However, if we treated each other with love, we would make the world absolutely clean! Love would ensure that we did not demand any excess for ourselves and then everything would normalize. How different would things be from today where all the oceans are full of garbage and radioactive waste.

The only thing we lack in our world is attention toward one another and mutual participation in the integral system, and we will get there out of despair.
[24733]
From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/24/10, “Matan Torah”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Correct Formula Of Existence
Laitman.com Post: What Do We Gain From Love Of Friends?
Laitman.com Post: Love And Hate Are Just One Step Apart

Filed under: Crisis, Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, World - 2 Comments →

Question: If everything depends on the power of thought then why can’t I participate in the Convention while sitting at home on my living room couch in front of the computer screen, with a cup of coffee and a cigarette?

Answer: Trust me, I understand you very well since I also like doing that. However, the matter is that I require inspiration. I have to receive an impression from the group. I need a society that’s as strong and as high as possible. I need a goal-oriented, gutsy group, a team, and a mass of people to influence me and turn me into whatever it wishes.

Can I receive this impression while sitting at home on my living room couch in front of a computer screen? If the answer is yes, then there’s no problem – go ahead and stay at home. However, we know our nature better than that. A person has to find a place where he can dissolve in society and receive the society’s mind and feelings. Let them replace everything that fulfills my heart and mind; then I am bound to be moving in the direction of the plan of creation.

The Creator works with the group, as it is written, “I dwell among my nation.” However, He does not work with me alone. If I become part of the group, then inside it I find contact with the Creator. That is how I reveal His thought (which becomes my thought by virtue of my choice) until I begin to understand and accept His program even before it is actualized.

Baal HaSulam talks about this in his article, “Thou Hast Hemmed Me In Behind and Before.” If I connect to the Creator, I gain the opportunity to plan actions as if I am planning them and He carries them out. The Creator gives me this opportunity if I attain His thought. Of course, all of this is a result of love, just like our children control us, their parents.
[24768]
From the lesson on 10/21/10, “The Power of Thought”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Greatest Gain
Laitman.com Post: Practical Realization
Laitman.com Post: Everyone Gets To Know The Creator

Filed under: Conventions - No Comments →

The Book of Zohar influences us with the Light that’s concealed inside it. If we desire to use that Light for our correction, then the only place needing to be corrected is the connection between us.

Therefore, each of us should try to imagine where exactly he needs to make corrections. However, we don’t even fully feel yet that our relationships are founded on unfounded hatred and repulsion instead of brotherly love.

This quality must transform back to love, and the power of The Book of Zohar is able to accomplish this. Then, inside the renewed connection between us, we will reveal the entire Upper World.
[23931]
From the 2^nd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/17/10, The Zohar

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Spiritual Contactor
Laitman.com Post: About Love And Hate
Laitman.com Post: I Am My Beloved’s And My Beloved Is Mine

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, Zohar - No Comments →

We have difficulty understanding the language of Kabbalists. The very subject matter of the discussion is concealed from us, and we don’t know what the Light and Kli (vessel), the Creator and the creature, the spiritual worlds, or the correct and incorrect relationships are. We are unable to compare what is written in the text with reality because spiritual reality is aimed at bestowal and doesn’t exist in our perceptions that are still egoistic.

In memorizing the words of Kabbalists, we don’t get to know their essence, but use the clichés that we had previously agreed on. Even if we bring some understanding into them, how do we know that it is correct? After all, the spiritual states that the wisdom of Kabbalah is talking about haven’t left sensations and impressions in us yet.

All that we feel in our egoistic desire is not related to spirituality. In order to understand Kabbalistic texts, we need to internally jump over our egoism, freeze in this inner flight, and start absorbing the meaning of their words. This is why we need to shift the words of Kabbalists into the realm of sensory perception. In the World of Infinity, everything is simple: The Light fills the vessel (Kli).

However, at the stages of development from below upward, while studying the text without feeling it, it is impossible to visualize what is being discussed, understand, or even mechanically memorize it since we are not undergoing any of what the Kabbalists are describing. As an effect of studying, some ideas are kept in the memory, but since there is a lack thereof in the feelings, we get tangled and lost in them.

This continues until we are able to feel the spiritual states being described to the degree of our equivalence with them in our properties of bestowal. This can be achieved solely by way of working with the friends since love of the others leads to love for the Creator.

While remaining in egoism, we must first discover our hate in the yearning to be connected with the friends; then, we have to correct it until we have come to love as to a bridge that lies over an abyss of hate. Thanks to this correction, the abyss will be filled with the Light.
[22722]
From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/6/10, “In Everything We Must Discern Between Light and Kli”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: What Words Cannot Convey
Laitman.com Post: A Language Created By Nature
Laitman.com Post: A Perfect Language

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Group Work, Inner Work, Kabbalah Study - 1 Comment →

Question: What motivates me to keep the covenant I made with the Creator?

Answer: Nothing does! Suppose I fell in love with a girl. A month later I don’t want her anymore. What should I do? People tell me, “You have to stay with her for life.” But why should I? It would be a lie, not the desire of my heart. If I hate her now, how will I be able to live all my life with her? How, then, do we commit to marriage? We realize that we won’t be able to live with the same feeling of infatuation forever and it will be a lie.

Marriage has an Upper Root: the union of the Creator and the created being, founded on attainment of the Higher Goal, not corporeal love. Love is defined as mutual support and assistance toward achieving this goal.

If I understand this principle, I can rise above my desire to receive pleasure and walk my path of life by way of bestowal. I don’t sign a promise saying that I will love bestowal all my life; this is impossible and therefore we can’t even talk about that. Rather, I sign the promise saying that I will always treat the Creator as Great, and I wish to attain Him by way of making a covenant with Him. That is why it is written: “Husband and wife, and the Creator between them.” Otherwise, there won’t be a marriage.

It is the Host who matters to me, not His table full of delicious treats that stands between us. The “treats” serve as the first contact between us, until I am able to build a higher connection with the Host in order to attain that higher connection. In other words, the covenant we make with the Host does not happen at the level of love between us, or because He provides “treats” for me, as in the case with a young man and a young woman who marry because of the animate love between them. On the contrary, we value each other because the connection between us allows us to reach the Upper Root, the exalted spiritual goal.

Now, a question arises: How can one remain focused on this exalted goal? That is why we need the group. It is the place where you have a guarantee, and it can give you the force of faith which will always serve as your “fuel.” You can’t achieve this on your own. Even the Creator won’t hold you up if you don’t make the effort.
[21431]
From the 1^st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/17/10, “A Transgression Does Not Put Out A Mitzva”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Covenant Of Friends
Laitman.com Post: What Is The Covenant With The Creator?
Laitman.com Post: “Grace Is Deceitful And Beauty Is Vain”
Laitman.com Post: Cutting Off The Past In Order To Enter The Future

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love, Marriage - 1 Comment →

What we are creating between us is interconnection, interdependence, mutual guarantee, love, and a definite necessity to be together. This is the connection (or the "place") we have to create so that inside it we will reveal the Creator who hides from us. He will speak to us from this place we create, "the tent of revelation."

Without having this communication system between us and the Creator, we are just crying out into empty space. We can only turn to the image that we form through our connection: the Creator’s Temple.

It is written that love for the Creator can only be attained through love for others. That is why we are building a spiritual system of mutual guarantee and mutual support among us. Its purpose is to reveal the Creator.

Therefore, our primary necessity is to work on building the group. The first condition for receiving the Torah, the Light of Correction at the foot of Mount Sinai (the state of revealing mutual hatred) was the impossibility yet the willingness to bond together as one man with one heart, and to work on this unity by the principle, "we shall do and we shall hear."

No matter how small our willingness to do this, if we have it, then we have a common point, a "window" through which we can turn to the Creator. This common point is already Malchut of the World of Atzilut, the Shechina.

That is how we should understand the preparation for the reception of the Torah.

From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 9/14/10, Writings of Rabash

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The House For The Creator
Laitman.com Post: Preparation For Receiving The Torah: The Light Of Correction
Laitman.com Post: Where To Search For The Creator
Moments From The Daily Lesson: Communication

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Unity - 1 Comment →

We are incapable of receiving into our desires all the Light of bestowal that is prepared for us at once. The solution to this problem is simple: to receive it in small “doses,” generation after generation, and let billions of people and not just one person work on this in each generation. In this way, we will receive all the Light into one joint vessel of our common soul.

The goal, however, is to collect all the broken parts of the common soul that were deliberately shattered from Above and now feel separated and hostile to each other. The hatred that exists between us encompasses the entire force of connection which was meant to reveal itself by us “receiving in order to bestow.” However, this failed to happen and led us to “receiving for our own sake.”

So, this dividing force transforms itself during the breaking into its opposite and is now at the disposal of the created beings. By correcting hatred in all prior generations and within the multiple parts in each generation, all we do is recover the connections between separated souls. In other words, our goal is not to receive the Light for the sake of bestowal, but to re-connect the splinters that emerged after the breaking. By attaining connection, the creature will reach the power of bestowal and, later on, attain “receiving in order to bestow.”

We have to realize that correction of the state of separation between us and construction of relationships based on bestowal and love is our distinction. Not only did the Creator shatter us into multiple particles; most importantly, they were separated by hostility. To correct them means to collect and connect these particles back together. We have to pay attention to this rather than concentrate on the Light that becomes revealed within us. The Light that corrects our desires, the Light of love and bestowal, has to descend to us before anything else.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 7/14/10, “Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Help Me Today And I’ll Help You Tomorrow
Laitman. com Post: We Are All Responsible For One Another
Laitman. com Post: The Greatest Light Is Revealed Above The Greatest Hatred

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Inner Work - No Comments →

A question I received: Why is it said that the strength of spiritual Light brought to us by the wisdom of Kabbalah is bigger than an atomic explosion?

My Answer: We know that the most powerful forces in our world are obscure and hidden. Muscle strength, a stick in a clenched fist, or a knife in a hand are dwarfed by firearms and explosives. However, the principle remains the same: to inflict a blow.

An even stronger impact exists when we don’t feel the blow in and of itself, but rather its consequences such as with radioactivity. Nowadays, psychotropic weapons have been invented; they don’t impact the human body but our psyches. Humankind uses higher levels of energy as it develops. We don’t feel them, nor do we perceive them through our five senses. We only suffer from their consequences when they cause us harm.

Spiritual power is higher than all other energies. It doesn’t exist in matter, waves, or even thoughts. This force can’t be detected by any worldly instruments. It is impossible to use this force with evil intention. The law of the First Restriction (Tzimtzum Aleph) prohibits such use of this energy. It can be used only for the sake of bestowal, that is, for our neighbors’ good.

Thousands of years of humanity’s development were needed to arrive at the conclusion that we shouldn’t use the power for evil. We should restrict our egoism by using it only for the sake of bestowal, for the benefit of other people.

Spiritual weapons are armaments of love. They are extremely strong and are meant to show a person that he must switch to a different perception of reality, the world, and his life. It is not about another “improved” stick in one’s hand, but rather it’s…a flower. It possesses an unusual strength under the condition that we know how to use it.

When we begin to use this spiritual power, then the Upper Force that rules the whole universe starts to act on our side and begins to fulfill the work together with us. All we have to do is to attract this power instead of looking for it within ourselves. We have to attract the Creator so that He acts for us. Everything in this world depends on the person who attracts the Upper Light, and his “weapon” is the dissemination of the wisdom of Kabbalah.

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: The Wondrous Attraction Of Spirituality
Kabbalah Today Article: Time to Act
Kabbalah Moments: "A French Question About Love"

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Kabbalah Dissemination, Perception - No Comments →

A question I received: In this world, we receive egoistic pleasure from giving. What is the advantage of being in the Upper World if we receive pleasure from bestowal there as well?

My Answer: If we were allowed to enjoy bestowal in this world, then we would be giving all the time. The question is why do we give in this world? It is in order to receive pleasure. This is the difference between this material world and the spiritual world.

In this world people are willing to give up everything just for a moment of pleasure. Enjoyment is everything and the action itself does not matter to us. When we love somebody else, we are ready to give him or her everything including our life. This is because there is a mechanism inside of us that secretes a love and pleasure “drug” inside us. But if we don’t feel love, then we are not willing to give because we won’t feel any pleasure from it.

Now, here is the question: Do we need love to give or to feel enjoyment? This is the difference between the two worlds.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 5/4/10, Article “Matan Torah”

Related Material:
Laitman.com Post: Like A Loving Mother Giving To Her Child
Laitman.com Post: Rising To Infinity Along The Steps Of Love
Video: The Language Of Bestowal – 5 Minutes Of Light (5:14)

Filed under: Daily Kabbalah Lesson, Love - No Comments →